GUN TROUBLE AT DIAMONDBACK (Bear Haskell, U.S. Marshal Book 1)

by Peter Brandvold

  “I’ll be damned if they don’t pile the government shit deep nowadays!” he said, laughing. “Shit, this federal’s as big as a damn mountain!”

  “The bigger they are, the harder they fall!” laughed the youngest—the blonde husky kid.

  The man in the wagon gave the three younkers and Haskell a consternated look then sank into the wagon’s driver’s seat, released the brake, shook his reins over his horse’s back, and rattled quickly away.

  Haskell gained the top of the loading dock and faced the husky kid, bland-faced. “You wanna make me fall?”

  The husky kid looked Haskell up and down once more, flushing. “No,” he muttered. “I was just sayin’.”

  The other two laughed. The kid in the shabby bowler said, “You was just sayin’ what, Shane?”

  “Shut up, Ferrell, or ... ”

  “Or what?” Ferrell said, laughing.

  Haskell turned toward the mercantile’s front door, which was flanked by several shelves and barrels of sundry merchandise. The tallest, older kid crossed his arms as though to block the door. “We don’t cotton to federals mixin’ in Diamondback’s affairs.”

  Haskell walked straight up to him and stopped one foot away. His shadow covered the tallest of the three, whose face blanched. Slowly, he lowered his arms.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Why?”

  Haskell just stared at him.

  “Cotton,” the tallest of the three kids said, looking a little intimidated. “Cotton Bennett.”

  “Well, Cotton Bennett, what do you know?”

  “Know about what?”

  “Lou Cameron.”

  “Lou Cameron?” said Shane Bennett, the husky kid. “He’s dead. That’s what I know about him.” He laughed.

  Loud muffled voices rose from inside the shop. They seemed to be coming from a back room. Haskell couldn’t make out any of the shouted words, but he could tell that one of the shouters was an older man. Judging by the pitch of her voice, the other was a young woman.

  “What’s that all about?” Haskell asked Cotton Bennett.

  “That ain’t none of your fuckin’ business,” said Shane.

  “Get out of my way,” Haskell told Cotton, who stood blocking the front door, which was propped open with a barrel bristling with garden rakes and picks and shovels.

  “We don’t allow federal badge-toters in the store,” Cotton said.

  Haskell reached up with his left hand and grabbed Cotton’s right ear.

  “Ow!” Cotton complained as Haskell, tugging on the tall kid’s ear, moved him out of the doorway.

  Haskell released the kid’s ear and said, “Next time you get in front of me, prepare to lose that ear.”

  Cotton rubbed his ear and wrinkled his nose, pouting. Behind Haskell, Shane and Ferrell were laughing. Haskell stepped into the mercantile, a small, cramped store that smelled of new denim and wool and cotton and leather boots and freshly milled grain.

  A crude plank counter ran along the rear of the store, fifteen feet from the door. A curtained doorway shone behind the counter. Beyond the curtain, the man and the girl continued to argue passionately, but Haskell still couldn’t make out their words. There was a cowbell over the door. He reached up and gave it a good shake with his hand.

  Instantly, the arguers stopped arguing.

  The man said something sharply, tightly, and then footsteps rose behind the curtain flanking the counter. The curtain parted and a pretty blonde girl, red-faced from crying, poked her head into the store.

  “Can I help you?” she said, sniffing and wiping tears from her plump cheeks with the backs of her hands. Her voice had quavered with her barely tethered emotion.

  “Looks like you could use the help, Miss,” Haskell said, placing his hands on the counter. “Anything I can do?”

  The girl’s eyes found the badge pinned to his chest. She hesitated then, swallowing, averting her gaze, pushed through the curtain and walked into the area behind the counter. She was big-boned but pretty, with a round face, button nose, and long, slanted eyes. She wore a simple, gray muslin housedress, long-sleeved and without a single frill. Straw-yellow hair was pulled back into a severe bun pinned behind her head. Her voice was tomboy-husky. “No. I’m just being my typical, cork-headed self, that’s all. I don’t know up from down and never have.”

  “I don’t get your meaning, Miss ... ”

  “Bernadine. Bernie for short. Don’t mind me, Mister ... ”

  “Marshal Bear Haskell. Deputy U.S. Marshal Bear Haskell.”

  The girl’s watery lilac blue eyes flicked to the badge again, and she nodded. “I see.”

  “See what?”

  She shook her head and gave her cheeks another quick swipe with the heels of her hands this time. “Don’t mind me, Marshal Haskell. I’m a silly girl. Given to flights of fancy. Always have been, always will be.”

  Haskell glanced at the young men milling on the porch behind him, staring into the store. “Those your brothers out there?”

  “That’s them, all right,” she said with a sigh.

  “I bet they’re a handful.”

  Bernadine Bennett didn’t say anything as she gazed up at Haskell, holding his gaze with an oblique, stubborn one of her own. Haskell sensed a rumbling volcano of emotion inside her. She could barely contain it. He had a feeling, however, that she would contain it, and his prodding her further would only cement her resolve to keep quiet about whatever the problem was.

  “I’d be needing some Indian Kid cigars, if you got ‘em, and two boxes of forty-four cartridges. Rimfire.”

  The curtain was swept aside behind her, and a big man—nearly as big as Haskell—stepped out. He’d appeared so suddenly that Bernadine gave a startled gasp as she swung her head toward him.

  “Who’re you?” the big man asked Haskell. Then his eyes found the badge on Haskell’s shirt, and his gaze slid back to the lawman’s face. He didn’t look pleased.

  “Come meet Deputy U.S. Marshal Bear Haskell, Father,” Bernadine said, all smiles now though said smiles were stiff as two-by-fours. “Deputy U.S. Marshal Bear Haskell, meet my father, Zach Bennett.”

  Chapter Ten

  Zach Bennett had a big, round head with the bulging forehead and dark, demented eyes of a dimwitted brute. His hair was coarse and dark-brown, lightly sprinkled with gray. He didn’t have much of it left—just a light dusting atop his head. The rest of it hadn’t been trimmed in a while. He wore a long green apron over a blue flannel shirt and denim trousers.

  He grabbed his daughter’s arm and pulled her back behind him, turning her around as he did. “You git back to work in the storeroom. I want every one of them feed sacks counted and stacked proper before the riders from the Drumstick get here. You count ‘em accurate, too, or I’ll tan your bottom!”

  “You just think you will!” Bernadine retorted, scrunching up her face.

  Bennett drew his arm back as if to smack her with the back of his hand. She gave a clipped yowl and bolted through the curtained doorway and was gone.

  “You rule with an iron hand,” Haskell said when Bennett had turned back to him.

  “You gonna tell me how to raise my kids?”

  Haskell glanced at the man’s sons all standing just outside the open door, glaring in at him, narrow-eyed, thumbs in their pockets or arms crossed on their chests. Haskell turned back to Bennett, chuckling. “You’re obviously doin’ such a fine job—why would I want to intrude? Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed passel you have there. Cream of the crop!”

  “You bein’ smart with me, Mister?”

  “Pull your horns in, Bennett. You might teach your sons to do likewise before someone snaps ‘em like pickup sticks. Just the smokes and the forty-four shells.”

  “Fresh out of both.”

  “Really? That’s funny.” Haskell leaned over the bar and grabbed two boxes of .44 shells off a shelf in the back wall. Then he plucked a cigar box off another shelf a little lower down, grabbed a handful of the India
n Kids, and set the box back on the shelf. “Your inventory must be off.”

  Haskell laid the cigars on the bar beside the shells, stuck one in his mouth, bit off the end, and spit it on the floor. “Talley ‘er up. I got me a drink waitin’ somewhere.”

  “A dollar and six bits for the shells, fifty cents for the cigars.”

  Haskell reached into his pants pocket. A shadow moved across the counter from behind him. He’d heard the floorboards squeak but he’d waited to react until, out of the corner of his right eye, he saw a long, slender shadow flick toward him.

  Wheeling, he raised his left arm in time to keep the garden rake from cracking his skull. He sent his right fist into Shane Bennett’s face, smashing the kid’s nose sideways. Blood splashed across the kid’s face and into both eyes, making him howl.

  Ferrell Bennett ran at Haskell from the door, bellowing and lowering his head, intending to bull Bear over backward. Haskell stepped to his own left, grabbed Ferrell by his shirt collar, twirled him around, and threw him through the plate glass window and onto the loading dock in a shrill screech of breaking glass.

  “Ohhh!” Zach Bennett intoned. “Oh, Jesus Christ—my window!”

  Hearing more footsteps thumping toward him, Haskell turned to see the tall, skinny Cotton Bennett hurling himself at him, swinging a brand-new hatchet.

  Haskell ducked.

  The hatchet whistled through the air above his head.

  He straightened as Cotton was half-turned away from him now with the hatchet-swing’s momentum. Haskell jabbed his left fist into Cotton’s right ear twice before soundly felling the younker with a right jab to the screaming kid’s right temple, splitting it open.

  The kid’s knees had just hit the floor before Haskell jerked him to his feet and hauled him outside and across the loading dock before tossing him into the stock trough near a hitch rack at the dock’s far right corner. The kid hit the water on his back, bellowing and bobbing, the water closing over him. He heaved himself up out of the water and fell over the side of the trough and into the boggy mire the displaced water had formed around the trough, in the street.

  The kid grabbed his head in both arms, and wailed.

  Haskell turned to see Ferrell Bennett lying on a bed of broken glass on the boardwalk, waving his arms and stomping his boots, cursing loudly. His shabby bowler lay nearby, speckled with glass. Haskell walked back into the shop. Zach Bennett remained behind the counter, glaring at Haskell with such fury that the lawman thought the older man’s dung-brown, close-set eyes would pop out of their sockets.

  Shane Bennett was on his hands and knees, clamping both hands over his badly smashed, bloody nose. He glowered at Haskell through fast-swelling eyes.

  “Forgot my purchases,” Haskell told the older Bennett.

  He swiped the smokes and shells up off the counter then crouched to retrieve the cheroot he’d dropped when Shane had tried to decapitate him with the garden rake. Straightening, he turned to Zach again, and said, “You an’ me an’ your demon spawn are going to powwow about the murder of Lou Cameron. After this little do-si-do in here, all four of you have just moved yourselves up to the top of my list of suspects. You’d best talk about it, get your stories straight.”

  He tossed a few coins onto the counter, winked at the glaring Bennett. “Till later ... ”

  He swung around and walked out onto the loading dock. Ferrell was sitting up now, plucking glass out of his left arm.

  “Fuckin’ bastard,” the kid muttered poutily as Haskell walked past him and descended the steps to the street.

  “Careful, boy,” Haskell said. “Or I’ll arrest you for bad-mouthing a federal lawman while in the pursuit of his duties.”

  He chuckled at that and looked along the street toward the east and the heart of the ragged-looking, roughhewn town. A hang-headed figure was slouching toward Haskell, on the street’s left side. The lawman recognized Big Deal as the kid turned to enter Miss Yvette’s Slice of Heaven Sporting Parlor. Haskell paused to light his cheroot then began strolling toward the whorehouse. Obviously, the townsfolk had heard the cacophony rising from Bennett’s Mercantile. Just as when Haskell had first ridden into town, men on the either side of the street eyed him warily. So did the only two ladies out and about now in the late afternoon—two gray-hairs in gaudy gowns and picture hats chinning in front of the grocery store.

  Haskell pinched his hat brim to the ladies and continued heading for Miss Yvette’s. He pushed through the heavy wooden door, which was painted lime-green and had a small oil painting of a high-heeled red shoe nailed to it.

  The room he found himself in was a large parlor with furniture from different eras, most of it sun-faded and shabby and peppered with burns from cigarettes or cigars. It appeared to have been arranged willy-nilly, and was probably hastily rearranged according to the needs of the clientele.

  There was a baby grand piano in one corner, with an American flag draped over it and an oil painting of George Washington on the wall behind it. A woman’s black corset hung from one corner of the gilt frame.

  The only two people in the room—a young man and one of Miss Yvette’s doves—sat in a deep, brocade-upholstered sofa on the room’s far right end, facing a window in that wall. Two young boys were peeking into the dusty window at the pair on the sofa, but neither seemed to notice. The young man was sobbing about some girl leaving him, and the dove was patting his back and consoling him in soothing tones. Over the young man’s shoulder, the dove’s eye strayed to Haskell, and she gave a lascivious little smile and a wink.

  The big lawman grinned and pinched his hat brim to her.

  He walked straight ahead through a broad open doorway framed by two stout posts from which oil lamps hung, and entered what appeared an eating and/or drinking area with several small tables. Big Deal sat at a table against the wall to Haskell’s left, facing the lawman. He had a soda bottle with a metal swing top on the table before him, and he was sulkily building a quirley. A crude stairway of bare pine planks ran up the wall to Haskell’s left.

  Beyond the eating area, through another broad open doorway, lay a kitchen with a big iron range. Two doves sat at a table near the range. They looked like they hadn’t been awake very long. They still had sleep ribbons in their hair. They were dressed in drab wool housecoats over corsets and bustieres and men’s wool socks, and they were speaking in low, intimate tones while smoking small, black cigars.

  A stocky Chinaman was chopping vegetables at a stout wooden table fronting the range on which two large cast-iron stew pots bubbled and steamed. A big coffee pot smoked on a warming rack. He looked at Haskell warily, one eye narrowed, muttering to himself around the loosely rolled quirley dangling from his mustached lips.

  Haskell waved and grinned at the man, who kept eyeing him suspiciously while chopping vegetables.

  “I’d take a cup of coffee from you, Pete,” Haskell called to the Chinamen, whom he didn’t know from Adam’s off-ox. “Dump some whiskey into it, will you?” He tossed the man a quarter. The Chinaman caught the quarter with one hand, wrinkled a nostril at the newcomer, then turned to the range.

  Haskell turned to Big Deal, whose table he was standing near. With a sour expression, the kid licked his quirley closed. Haskell gestured at the bottle on the table, near Big Deal’s right elbow. “Sarsaparilla?”

  Big Deal cocked a reluctant look at the big lawman, sniffed through one nostril, and said, “I try not to hit the firewater till after five o’clock. At five o’clock, though, you’d best look out. Since I’m jobless now, I can get good and drunk all night long. Might paint the town red and shoot it up.”

  Haskell kicked a chair out and slacked into it, across from the kid. He didn’t like sitting with his back to the front door, especially in the wake of the trouble he’d encountered at the mercantile, but he saw no way to avoid it save his asking the kid to exchange places with him. He’d keep an ear skinned for trouble coming up behind him.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to yo
u about,” he told Big Deal.

  “What—me paintin’ the town red or shootin’ it up?”

  Haskell opened his mouth to respond but stopped when the portly Chinamen brought over a steaming, chipped stone mug and a whiskey bottle. He set both on the table without saying anything, only staring skeptically down at Haskell, squinting against the smoke rising from the quirley in his mouth. He gave a slow blink and then turned and shuffled back into the kitchen.

  He said something under his breath but since it sounded like Chinese, Haskell couldn’t understand it. He didn’t need to. Obviously, the Chinaman didn’t cotton to him anymore than anyone else in the town seemed to.

  Haskell reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the town marshal’s badge. He tossed it onto the table near Big Deal’s sarsaparilla bottle.

  “What’s that for?” Big Deal said.

  “Pin it on your shirt. That outfit needs somethin’.”

  Big Deal looked at him dubiously.

  “Go on,” Haskell said. “I don’t think you killed Lou Cameron.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t. I was fishing. You jerked my line but you’re off the hook now, so swim down current. It’s less work.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Pull your horns in. There’s nothing worse than a lawman with a short fuse.”

  “Well, it’s just that ... I never would have killed ole Lou. Me an’ him was pals. He was like a pa to me.”

  “So you said. I believe you.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “There’s others in town acting more suspicious than you. Hell, everybody in town looks at me like they were the ones who dropped the hammer on Lou. I’m not sure how in the hell I’m gonna smoke out the killer, but I’m going to stay here until I do. And smoke out his reason for killin’ Lou, to boot!”